Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in to general computing systems, and more particularly to, various embodiments for removal of reference information associated with storage blocks in computing storage environments incorporating deduplication functionality.
Description of the Related Art
Today with modern technology, large volumes of data are storable on disk drives; these drives can exist as a solo entity, or as part of a broader make up within a larger storage environment. Often times when writing to even the smallest environment, single drives, duplicate data is written. These duplicated contents can then be deduplicated using standard deduplication techniques so long as specific metrics are met.
Various deduplication techniques may be used to deduplicate files. For example, the file may be analyzed against an additional file to determine if the file has the same size, name, and contents when analyzed at the block-by-block level. Deduplication technology allows, at a high level, the elimination of duplicate information in storage environments, such that the storage held by the duplicate information is then released, opening up potentially significant amounts of additional storage space in the computing storage environment and otherwise improving performance.